Posted
by
timothyon Thursday October 01, 2009 @03:52PM
from the moment-we've-all-been-waiting-for dept.

Omomyid writes "I wasn't actually aware that Dr. Tim White of UC Berkeley had been 'sitting' on A. ramidus but apparently he has (I remember the original flurry of interest back in the '90s when it was announced), but now Dr. White and others have assembled a nearly complete skeleton of the 4.4mya specimen and the descriptions being carried by the NY Timesand the AP are intriguing. Ramidus is clearly differentiated from the other Great Apes and also more primitive than A. afarensis (Lucy), providing a nice linkage backwards to the last shared ancestor between humans and chimpanzees. According to the NY Times, a whole passel of papers will be published in tomorrow's Science magazine describing A. ramidus."Update — 10/01 at 22:05 GMT by SS: Reader John Hawks provided a link to his detailed blog post about Ardipithecus, which contains a ton of additional details not covered in the above articles.

Birthers are a group of clueless, angry white people who firmly believe President Obama was born outside the US. Deathers are a group, nearly identical in membership, that believes President Obama wants to enact 'death panels' that will deny needed health care to seniors. Most birthers are deathers, and vice versa. They also tend to believe that they either need to secede from the union, or stage a military coup, as the country has now become a communist dictatorship. Hope that helps.

No they're not, Captain Clueless. The two (or three, as it were) have nothing to do with each other. Only the jackass who modded you "insightful" is more clueless.

All three are absolutely ridiculous assertions that have been debunked six ways from Sunday. Believing that death panels will kill your granny, or that the President of the United States was born in Kenya, are as ludicrous as believing the Earth is flat, or that we never landed on the moon.

I say, thou heathen, that thy lack of belief in the great and mighty Flying Spaghetti Monster will be thy downfall. The great and holy FSM shall descend up thou and thy offspring, yeah onto the seventh generation. And thou shall weep tears of sorrow and wear clothes stained with marinara sauce for thy inequity.

All praise be, now brethren lets us break the garlic bread of brotherhood and bow our heads in supplication, Amen.

There are, however, plenty of Americans of every race that have been awakened to the goings-on in the US government and joining in opposing them [...] But, go ahead and dismiss all this as racist tea-bagging. Now that it's not W running the show, I guess is okay that the wars (and funding for them) are continuing, that the illegal wiretapping is being even more vociferously defended, that federal agents can write their own warrants and continue to do so, and the widening income gap will continue to widen as the rich are bailed out and the middle class is left to pick up the tab.

All of a sudden, they're awakened to those issues! Funny how all those same goings ons were fine by them when there wasn't a black man in the white house.

It is a dam shame that the new boss is the same as the old boss, but it's a really HUGE coincidence that the same policies suddenly frighten some that didn't mind them before, and that the new boss is different in one very visible way. Huge coincidence.

You might recall that John Hinckley was a seriously deranged young man
who shot President Reagan in the early 1980's.

Hinckley was absolutely obsessed with movie star Jodie Foster,
extremely jealous, and in his twisted mind, loved Jodie Foster to the
point that to make himself well known to her, he attempted to
assassinate President Reagan.

There is speculation Hinckley may soon be released as having been
rehabilitated. Consequently, you may appreciate the following letter
from Nancy Reagan to the staff at the mental facility treating
Hinckley reports to have intercepted:

To: John Hinckley

From: Mrs. Nancy Reagan

My family and I wanted to drop you a short note to tell you how
pleased we are with the great strides you are making in your recovery.
In our fine country's spirit of understanding and forgiveness, we want
you to know there is a nonpartisan consensus of compassion and
forgiveness throughout.

The Reagan family and I want you to know that no grudge is borne
against you for shooting President Reagan. We, above all, are aware of
how the mental stress and pain could have driven you to such an act of
desperation. We are confident that you will soon make a complete
recovery and return to your family to join the world again as a
healthy and productive young man.

Best wishes,

Nancy Reagan & Family

P.S. While you have been incarcerated, Barack Obama has been banging
Jodie Foster like a screen door in a tornado. You might want to look
into that.

The problem with framing it as "killing granny" is it has been shown time and time again that often truly outrageous amounts of money are spent on those elderly who are in already bad shape, all to gain maybe another year. While you might think it is fine to spend half a million to let grandma go from 90 to 91 the simple fact is we fall apart when we get really old. That isn't cruelty, that is just part of being human. We get old, our organs begin to fail, we fall apart.

The problem we face now that we frankly have never really had to face before in history is this-with modern technology you can keep someone going past when their body would have conked out, but at often a truly insane cost. So we as a people need to decide if things like aggressive cancer treatments for someone who is pushing 90 is really where we should be spending our limited resources. That isn't being cruel, or 'killing granny" which BTW happens everyday to those a lot younger than granny who don't have health insurance and literally 'can't afford to live', this is just common sense.

My mom spent nearly 40 years as a nurse and some of the horror stories of families who simply refused to face reality and let a loved one go even though they were well past the point of hope would break your heart and sometimes sicken your stomach. Ones like the 32 year old girl whose family demanded aggressive treatment for their daughter after her head hit a concrete divider at 65MPH+. My mom had to put towels around that poor woman's head because her brains were coming out of her ears, yet thanks to "modern technology" they kept her alive like that for nearly a month before her body finally followed her brain and died. I can't tell you how much that month cost, but I'm sure it was truly staggering. These are things that we as a people are gonna have to sit down and talk about, because modern tech can keep a human body going for a lot longer than nature would allow, and just because we can do so doesn't always mean we should do so, especially when there is absolutely no hope like in that girl's case.

So I honestly think all the hysteria and politics are getting in the way of an important conversation we as a people are long overdue in having. While I have no problem in helping pay for cancer treatment for some little girl or father of two with decades of life yet to live if they can be saved, spending crazy amounts of money on somebody pushing 90 or on those that are just so horribly mangled or messed up that short of act of God have no chance whatsoever seems like an obscene waste of resources that could better be spent on those that have a fighting chance. We have limited resources and despite our technology we just can't save everybody, and unfortunately our technology can give the appearance of hope where there is truly none to be had. We as a nation need to sit down and decide where these limited resources are spent. Again this isn't some evil plot to kill granny, this is just common sense.

There's a correlation-is-not-causation problem with the Japanese/African IQ observation, the conclusion you're drawing is moderately racist.

It's more than moderately racist. And beliefs of that sort become self-fulfilling prophecies when widely held. [huppi.com] IQ studies that rigorously controlled for the effect of poverty, culture and societal prejudice are few and far between, and I've not heard of any that showed any significant disadvantage for a particular ethnic group.

IIRC, the cumulative effect of switching every "bad" intelligence linked gene we have found to it's "good" variety (excluding serious genetic disorders like Down's Syndrome and the

It simply does not matter whether a genetic change was brought about by human manipulation or random chance. A change in the genome is a change in the genome. You are still starting with a genome, right? There's your common ancestor. Was the genome designed? No. Were the changes designed? Yes. Is the resulting organism designed? Surely with our level of technology, not enough to even register.

I don't mean to be a dick, I'm really trying to be polite, but your questions simply do not merit a philosophical or

I was hoping to hear an answer on more of a philosophy or philosophy of science level, rather than on Judge Judy fan level.

Your query was on the "how do we know that intangible pink unicorns don't run the universe?" level. Unless there's evidence that would indicate such a thing happened, it's not worth thinking about in a *scientific* way.

What if there's no such thing as gravity, and we're all just held down by the FSM's noodly appendage?What if the world were created last Thursday, complete with us and all our memories?What if the entire universe is just a figment of my (deranged) imagination?

See, hypotheticals are fun!

In all seriousness though, assuming that someone/something reached down and tweaked our DNA, then left the solar system leaving no other evidence behind takes a pretty big leap. Especially when we have no reason to think tha

What creationists don't understand is that science isn't about killing religion, science couldn't care less what the religious implications of its discoveries are. Science is about the quest for knowledge, and knowing that humanity didn't evolve naturally would be the most important piece of knowledge ever discovered. In short, if evidence existed that contradicted our current scientific beliefs, it is in every scientists interests to bring that evidence to the table; the risk might be large but the payoff is enormous.

Unfortunately, the claim of an intelligent creator is difficult bordering on impossible to prove scientifically; it makes no predictions that can be tested, it happened so far in the past that there no remaining evidence to support it, and, unlike evolution, it is not an ongoing phenomonon.

Hmm... well, I'm not interested in a false dichotomy of "evolution" versus "religion", actually. "Evolution occurs" is clearly the case, I'm just not interested in the scientifically-invalid non-sequitur inference of "only evolution occurs".

Whatever my views (which, yes, I know you have to assert in the absence of any actual knowledge of what they are, to start your false-dichotomy argument), my question is interesting to me from a scientific standpoint apart from any religious question.

Part of the problem is that you're not really explaining yourself. What do you mean here? Do you mean altering of existing genes (1)? Do you mean creating completely new and novel genes (2)? Do you mean inserting kelp genes into humans (3)?

In the first example, that's pretty much an artificial form of normal genetic changes. The second example would be pretty unique, but still, the bulk of the new organism would definitely be human (or whatever species). The third example is very rare in more complex organisms, but horizontal gene transfer can occur here as well. Some part of our genome is, in fact, the product of viral infections (endo-retroviral insertions), which means that nature has already given us examples of my third type; genes that come from completely different lineages.

Now maybe you would have something of a point if we completely constructed an organism from artificial genes, or maybe constructed an organism from an entirely different replication chemistry. In that case, yes, it would be an example of wholly different tree of life. I would argue if its more a spare parts sort of an affair, where they construct a new genome from genes found in existing lineages, while it gets complicated, at its root, it still fits within the tree of life, just at multiple points. But then again, that would apply to any form of horizontal gene transfer. I've listed one pathway; ERVs, prokaryotes like bacteria often move genes back and forth, sometimes between very distantly related lineages.

...it seems rather odd to me that we could've had a significant population of ancestors that failed to leave a fossil record.

That isn't at difficult to explain. The problem lies in the assumption that evolution is continuous, steady change over time and that fossilization events are spread evenly throughout history. In reality, neither of those is true. Sudden changes in environment the rate of evolution to increase as ecological niches are created and destroyed. Likewise, fossilization events are rare and not spaced evenly throughout history. All it requires to create a seamingly large gap in the fossil record is for there to be a dearth of fossilization events while at the same time a sudden change in environment.

and it seems rather odd to me that we could've had a significant population of ancestors that failed to leave a fossil record.

It's not really so odd. First, however, is the assumption that there is a significant population who didn't leave fossils. It's probably more likely that there are fossils and they just haven't been found. The Earth is big and only a small percentage of it has been searched for fossils.

Then you have to consider that not all geologic structures and death conditions are conducive to fossil formation. Go out into a wild area today and count the number of animals you find. Then count the number of somewhat intact carcasses you find. You won't find many. So of the critters out there alive today, only a tiny percentage of them will end up as fossils in another few million years. On top of that, if the places humans like to live today were in similar conditions (near large sources of water, for example), there's a good chance that we've built over any fossils many times over.

I suspect that if you made a Drake-Equation like formula for predicting finding fossils of any particular type that even if many fossils might exist, very few of them would be found. Consider that of the millions of A. afarensis that probably existed, we have only found a handful of their fossils.

So sure, there is a gap, but there's a pretty reasonable explanation for that gap. Until we have exhausted such possibilities, and without startling evidence to the contrary, we can't seriously claim that the gap in the fossil record is caused by divine or extra-terrestrial intervention.

If a genetically-modified human were cloned today, would that clone be outside common ancestry?

No, because it would still be human. Many species of prokaryotes swap genes all the times, sometimes with other Prokaryotes of much different lineages. Even in eukaryotes, horizontal gene transfer can happen (very often due to retroviral infections, which can in fact act as a gateway for genes from different groups to get transplanted).

No, because it would still be human. Many species of prokaryotes swap genes all the times, sometimes with other Prokaryotes of much different lineages. Even in eukaryotes, horizontal gene transfer can happen (very often due to retroviral infections, which can in fact act as a gateway for genes from different groups to get transplanted).

Given this, care to venture to offer a precise working definition of "common ancestry"? If it does not mean "reproductive descent" (which, technically, I agree with), and

Clones are hardly unknown in the biological world. Many species of prokaryotes are clones (that is, the daughter organism is nearly identical to the mother, and there is no recombination involved).

I know what you and the parent are trying to say, that if we insert or modify the genetic makeup of some cloned individual, that somehow it is "parentless" and thus beyond common descent. But that's not the case, not unless you made an individual up many different genetic sources. Still, if this is a modified c

But that's not the case, not unless you made an individual up many different genetic sources.

And if I did?:)

Technologically, eventually, it's going to happen. Eventually, we'll synthesize the whole DNA custom to our desires. Will "common ancestry" then no longer be true? If not, what event will cause it to no longer be true, and how will we know?

Not to harp too much on this point, but I find this edge-case fascinating. Rather like the question of if you replaced every neuron in your brain with

"If a genetically-modified human were cloned today, would that clone be outside common ancestry?"

There are limits to what we know how to do. We've figured out how to do mammalian cloning (with some caveats and high inefficiency; Dolly the sheep for example). We could, if we expended sufficient effort, take chromosomes from different people and probably produce a viable clone from that, but the ancestry could be traced: It wouldn't be mom and pop, but mom(s) and dad(s). We could get a bit more exotic

...thanks to one abbreviation too many. It talks about "A. ramidus" (Ardipithecus ramidus [wikipedia.org]) and then immediately jumps to mentioning "A. afarensis". If you didn't already know what "A. afarensis" was, you might assume that it's another species within genus Ardipithecus, but that second "A." stands for a separate genus, Australopithecus [wikipedia.org].

Somehow the goofiness of vestigial things we have like tailbones and the appendix may lead one to believe that we're very unlikely to be "another race". Nobody has ever claimed (with any knowledge) that we descended directly from chimps, but merely that we likely have a common ancestor.

The simple fact that by sheer statistical analysis of decoded DNA, we're closest to chimps makes that a pretty logical starting point, don't you think?

The human tailbone is most certainly vestigial. Vestigial does not mean useless; it means that it once had a given function (external tail in this case) but no longer performs that function, but does not mean that it doesn't perform a different function. In humans, our coccyx is usually comprised of 3-5 vertebrae, which are usually fused into two or three segments. Not all function in muscle attachment, as is unsurprising given the variability in the structure. People have been born with nine calcified bones in the coccyx (plus cartilaginous structures), and external tails complete with articulating vertebrae (five's the record as far as I know) have been reported in the medical literature. People have also been born without a coccyx at all, although like external tails this is rare. Removal of the coccyx is called a coccygectomy (say that to your five year old!) and can be done on the whole or just a part of the structure with little or no side effects.

It might be fun to say that humans come from apes not monkeys but the content of that statement is pretty low. Humans are apes. We share a common ancestor with the other great apes which looked pretty ape-like. But before that apes and monkeys share common ancestors that if one looked at today one would call a monkey based on appearance. So saying that we're descended from apes not monkeys is a) nitpicky and b) not completely accurate anyways.

why is it so interesting to study where humans have come from and why exactly monkeys? Yeah they maybe look the most of us from all the animals, but intelligently and in other ways they're totally different.

This is exactly what's mentioned in one of the articles: "Ardi has many traits that do not appear in modern-day African apes, leading to the conclusion that the apes evolved extensively since we shared that last common ancestor."

It makes sense, if we evolved from the common ancestor in six million years, it's only reasonable to assume monkeys and apes also evolved. Think of the common ancestor not as an ape, but something that's as different from modern apes as it's different from humans.

Keep in mind that this common ancestor most likely didn't walk on two legs, wasn't hairless, and probably couldn't control its breathing, making it impossible to either talk or swim. So, yes, chimps certainly must have evolved somewhat, but not as much as humans and not in anything resembling the same direction. Therefore, this common ancestor was an ape (not a "monkey" as some insist on suggesting), though not a "modern" ape.

Also, no one seems to have pointed out, this creature bears a strong resemblance t

This is exactly what's mentioned in one of the articles: "Ardi has many traits that do not appear in modern-day African apes, leading to the conclusion that the apes evolved extensively since we shared that last common ancestor."

It makes sense, if we evolved from the common ancestor in six million years, it's only reasonable to assume monkeys and apes also evolved. Think of the common ancestor not as an ape, but something that's as different from modern apes as it's different from humans.

My useful (I think) analogy: I did not descend from my cousin. We both descended from my grandmother, who is different than either of us.

A religious upbringing, a lack of imagination, and a poor understanding of why abstract scientific endevours can be of practical use to mankind all help. That and having your head firmly planted up your posterior.

I disagree; human intelligence seems to have reached a critical threshold when we learned to accumulate knowledge over time. Of all the species on earth, most continue in the same way (limited by the rate of genetic evolution) generation after generation. Not people. Our lifestyles have evolved radically in the last 5000 years. So much so, it is clear no species on earth ever reached the threshold before, because we are exploiting the planet like no species b

There's more to trolling than getting people to respond to your post. From slashdot's FAQ:

Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.

1. We are very clearly related to monkeys, but morphologically and genetically.2. A helluva lot of behavioral research over the last fifty years has shown that even in our psychological makeup, we're not really that different from our closest relatives. Tool-use, language, culture have all been seen in other primates. Admittedly is nowhere near our level, but our capabilities are more about degrees of difference than in any particular novelty.3. Your last sentence makes no sense whatsoever.

From what I have seen, you are too earnest and concerned about your karma to be trolling. So let me kindly point out some of the misconceptions others may have missed. Obviously, you get the point that nobody thinks we are descended from monkeys. That's been hammered home, yes? But above that, you seem to be laboring under the delusion that biological science consists of deciding which critters look like which other critters. While this used to be the case, back before we had better methods, we can now do genetic analysis and figure out much more accurately what is or was related to what.

You also seem to be confused as the the concept of 'related.' If you and your sister are descended from the same point, say, your mother and father, are you related? Yes. Yes you are. We are not the descendants of monkeys, but we are still in the same family, so to speak. In fact, based on genetic evidence, even several million years after we split off from our common ancestor, we were still occasionally getting it on with them and making babies. It was discussed right here on Slashdot some time ago.

I can't really tell you why this whole idea of common descent is interesting, either you find it so or you don't. I can tell you why it is interesting to other people, though. Science is a process that approaches, but never reaches the truth. We make theories, and we see what predictions those theories make. Then we look for evidence showing whether or not those predictions are true, Finally, if the evidence shows the predictions are not true, we modify our theories. For instance, we had to modify Newton's theory of gravity when its predictions about the orbit of Mercury proved false. That lead to the Einstein's theories of relativity. But we still use Newton's theories in day to day engineering, because they are simpler to calculate and give correct results outside of relativistic situations. The truth or falsehood of theories is irrelevant, the only relevant question in science is, does the theory make accurate predictions?

How does this relate to the theory of evolution? Well, it is one piece of a giant puzzle. We have all of these pieces of evidence: fossils, DNA, carbon dating, and so on. They all fit together, forming a giant structure of factual support for the theory of evolution. If even one of these pieces did not fit, for instance, if we found a rabbit skeleton from the Jurassic period, then we would have to modify inconceivably large chunks of our current theories, not just evolution, but just about everything would need reevaluation.

So here we have a new piece. Does it fit? I find that question interesting. Many other people do too.

Any good programmer (hacker) is not going to recreate the wheel every time he does something, so if you were to set out to make several species, you would cut and paste some basic things at the DNA level and then modify things to suit your current needs.
I think God made both the apes and the humans...I like to call him the life hacker...and by definition its no wonder humans, apes and even pigs and frogs are similar in some of their DNA structures to humans.
Now I am not discounting evolution to some deg

I think you're talking about Distant Origin [imdb.com], which is a Voyager episode. Part of the episode involved a "projection" of evolution, starting with a bipedal dinosaur and ending with the creature in the episode. Completely ridiculous, of course; evolution doesn't have a goal and can't possibly be fast-forwarded. This misconception of evolution also appears in the episode where Tom Paris travels at warp 10 and "evolves" into a giant slug.

I've discussed [dumbscientist.com] this issue repeatedly, and always point out that your idea isn't testable. Yes, maybe God created all life. Yes, maybe He created the Earth (and our memories) 30 seconds ago. But since neither of these notions (or yours) can be tested, they're not competing with evolution because evolution can be tested. For instance, finding a chimp fossil in the Precambrian or a 1950s discovery that all species used different DNA bases. That's what makes evolution a science, while creationism is a religion.

And not in a bad way. If you think about the computer simulations we're been able to create in the short existence of our computer systems, it's pretty clear that someone else could had created our whole world as a simulation. Computing power is quite infinite; we're making even more and more progress all the time. And if simulation theory would be correct, we cant possibly know what kind of systems are running us.

(yeah it sounds matrix like.. but atleast it makes more sense than any religious/god crap anyway)

Without ends on the femur it's pretty hard to be sure about the height. There's a lot of art to this science and that still leaves most conclusions still debatable. Not that I would disagree, I'm just sayin'. Maybe that's why it took so long to publish.

Without ends on the femur it's pretty hard to be sure about the height.

That's what God invented comparative anatomy and comparative developmental biology for. While you're never going to know exact average heights for any extinct species, you can do some reasonably good guessing by looking at other similar and related animals for which you do know something about to get at least a reasonable number.

Compared to which species? The only picture I saw was in the Times article. They mention bones from other specimens but did any of them have intact fibulas AND femurs? Probably not. Considering all these bones have been through, that is a fabulous set that they have there. I was dissenting with GP about the conclusions that the QUALIFIED EXPERTS have arrived at, and agreeing with you. I'm just saying that these are subjective conclusions, subject to differing interpretations. I imagine Dr. White would concu

Compared to modern apes, that's what species. It isn't perfect (sometimes we can fooled by much greater sexual dimorphism than modern humans exhibit), but generally speaking, it's likely that this animal wouldn't have been terribly different than modern apes (including us).

The long delay can be attributed to the scientist actually doing his job. Catalog, research verify, then publish. Its the difference between reactionary pseudo science and actual work that produces results.

That apes are not an inferior species but instead specialized in one direction and humans in another has been well understood by biologists since at least the 70's...the 1870's.

Oh yeah? Well if apes aren't inferior, then why do we have writing and houses and cars and microprocessors and big office buildings with cubicle farms where we go to work every day and mortgages to pay off, while they just sit around lounging in the sun taking naps and eating fruit?

Oh yeah? Well if apes aren't inferior, then why do we have writing and houses and cars and microprocessors and big office buildings with cubicle farms where we go to work every day and mortgages to pay off, while they just sit around lounging in the sun taking naps and eating fruit?

We became more social, whereas chimpanzees grew longer fingers and became capable of swinging through trees

Another article [nationalgeographic.com] mentions that " Instead of fighting for access to females, a male Ardipithecus would supply a "targeted female" and her offspring with gathered foods and gain her sexual loyalty in return.
To keep up his end of the deal, a male needed to have his hands free to carry home the food. Bipedalism may have been a poor way for Ardipithecus to get around, but through its contribution to

Except that that is not how the evidence points. As a couple of scientists I've talked to have pointed out, the real destruction of your theory isn't genetics itself, it's developmental biology. If all organisms were, as you said, simply examples of copy and paste, why on Earth would, during developmental, would fetal snakes have signals that basically turned off the leg producing genes? Those genes are still there, still pretty close to identical to the genes found in the closest relatives to snakes that do have legs.

In fact, one of the chief arguments against life being engineered, that common genes being an example of procedural code being moved around like it was some sort of biological glibc is that everything about development is made up of hacks of this kind. Whether it's developmental hacks that shut down instructions to grow legs, to the very nature of many organisms physiology (such as a certain bipedal species with spines and knees only halfway adapted to full time upright walking) that would indicate that if your theory is right, the guy that made life is outrageously incompetent or malicious to the extreme.

Besides, it isn't just a matter of some similar genes. It is the differences in genes that are often key as to relatedness. Chimps and humans have a high degree of similarity, but it isn't one-to-one for many genes. Over time the two species have diverged, which means that even the same genes aren't always identical. These differences, particularly in mtDNA, can actually be used as molecular clocks to make estimates as to when the two species diverged.

In short, the evidence does not support your point of view. That view was long ago falsified. We are not the products of copy-and-pastes, but the products of evolutionary forces that work on populations over long stretches of time.

Um, did you read my comment completely, or did you just respond after the mention of God? I did not discount evolution I only said its part was not as important as some would like to believe:). As far as all creatures being a result of cut and paste off one original I did not say that either now did I?

Dobzhansky himself spoke of God as creating through evolution, and was a religious man who believed in the creator and hence creationism. He believed he did it through evolution entirely, and I believe he used a combination of creation and evolution. So I don't understand what you are getting at....
I did not say evolution was disproved completely, I should have just said Darwinism as a whole is flawed I suppose.

Charming idea except that might sound good superficially but really doesn't fit the actual evidence. First, life forms of a nested hierarchy (you know, the whole tree of life thing?). Designers don't make nested hierarchies unless they are trying to be deceptive. Evolution does. Nested hierarchies don't form when someone is just copying useful parts of one model to another.

A related problem is that humans and apes share some of the same mistakes in our DNA. For example, we share many of the same ERVs. ER